anyone using powerbi desktop as a standalone BI solution ?

[mim]

Hi Guys

just interested in hearing your experience in case you are using PowerBi desktop as a standalone solution, and how you manage the lack of some features

1- prininting capabilities.

2- Limited export to Excel.

3- Lack of formating for some charts

The reason, i am asking this question, i use exclusively Powerpivot to generate Excel dashboard using pivot tables and cube formula, the PowerBI cloud is not an option, we don't have SSAS or SSRS.

I tried PowerBI desktop but i feel, microsoft are only interested in promoting the tool as an authoring tool for the cloud or the future PowerBI on premise.

the only use case i can thing of is using it as a personal SSAS server, see here for details

so do you think it is sensible to use PowerBI desktop as a standalone Self service BI solution the likes of tableau desktop and Qlik Desktop ? which i tried both but i am too addicted to PowerQuery and DAX 🙂

[ImkeF · Accepted solution]

Hi @mim,

I hope you haven't overread that this is totally unsupported!  🙂

I haven't played around with it any further so far, as the need to manually enter the portnumber was a no go for me.

There are of course tons of limitations to it (especially if you compare it to the full grown software packages you've mentioned), so it would really just depend on your specific needs and your spirit of adventure to go a path where you would need to be fully self-sufficient. You should also have in mind not to take for granted that the features that now allow this "hack" will be available in future releases.

But still: This could be a door-opener for PBI adoption and maybe even convince the bosses that an investment in SSAS would make sense (as there seem to be some kind of M-integration in sight 🙂 ).

 And not to forget this 3rd party solution, which could also fit in your case: https://www.powerpivotpro.com/2015/02/introducing-power-update/

[mim]

thanks for your reply, that powerupdate looks like exactly what i am looking for, so technically i can load the data from the data model to sql server express 🙂

or who knows maybe Microsoft implement this idea i never understood how software comapnies works,tableau has not problem conneting to an excel PowerPivot mode, but microsoft require a sharepoint installation 😞